“Supper with Shakespeare: The Evolution of English Banqueting,” includes an intimate 17th-century banquet table complete with artificial historic foods in the Tudor Room Day. Ivan Day, guest curator and world-renowned English culinary historian, creates fantastic foods unlike any we have seen for centuries and will be sharing those creations in his display. Day is collaborating with U of M food historian Jeffrey Pilcher and Summit Brewing Company brewer Eric Harper for a Tudor Keg Party on Thursday, January 31, 2013 from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Participants will sample ale that Harper developed especially for this event and learn the history of brewing. This CrossTalk event is open to the public in the Target Wing Reception Hall. Call (612) 870-6323 to reserve tickets. The price is only $10.

The Walker has created a can’t-miss original display of 15 artists from the United States and Europe called “Painter Painter.” Artists bound by a common interest in “new languages of abstraction and eccentric modes of production” speak to us in the simple but powerful language of color and form in subtle abstraction. Creating individualistic art forms with studio-centric subjects and standard materials, they blow away burdensome context and ideological themes so common in recent art. The result is pure and refreshing.

More Real? Art in the Age of Truthiness
Minneapolis Institute of Arts
2400 3rd Ave.
Minneapolis, MN 55404
(612) 870-3000www.artsmia.org

Dates: March 10, 2013 through June 9, 2013

On the power scale of art, this exhibition is off the charts. Twenty-eight of “today’s most accomplished and promising international artists” are assembled in one exhibit. First is Ai Weiwei, a Chinese contemporary artist named number one on Art Review’s 2011 Power 100 list because of his social, political and cultural critiques. Another is Thomas Demand, a German conceptual artist who photographs his creations making them look like something they are not. Yet he loads his photos with social and political meaning. A third widely acclaimed artist is Brazilian Vik Muniz, whose photographs create the illusion such that what we think is a cloud is really a shred of cotton or what we think is an old photo of the moon landing is really a sketch. “More Real? Art in the Age of Truthiness” could not have happened without considerable resources. MIA collaborated with SITE Santa Fe to organize this exhibition with the generous support of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, supplemented by Institute of Museum and Library Services, MIA Contemporary Art Affinity Group and Étant donnés, the French-American Fund for Contemporary Art.

“Then Now Wow” is a great learning experience for kids, but parents will find themselves taken in by fascinating Minnesota historical artifacts and images. Not only is this the largest and most expansive exhibit ever created at the center, but where else can you jump onto a real Twin Cities streetcar or a Soo Line boxcar and watch the scenes of a different era flash by? Likewise, sit in a tipi, visit a sod house, descend down a mineshaft to extract iron ore or learn about Minnesota’s early fur trade from a beaver. Above all, relive the horrifying event of August 1, 2007, when a yellow school bus stopped just short of the chasm on the I-35W bridge over the Mississippi. The children and adults who scrambled for safety that day have all signed the emergency exit door now kept at the center.

More history than art, this exhibition of pictures profoundly documents our transitory riverfront. Historic photos side-by-side with photographs of the modern landscape from the same vantage point show the dramatic change. St. Anthony Falls disappears, St. Anthony Village becomes a major city, bridges are built and some collapse while change is constant. Photographer Jerry Mathiason and the Mill City Museum collaborate to produce this landmark documentary, “Minneapolis Riverfront Then and Now, 1858 and 2008.”

Robin Johnson was born in Annandale, Minn. and graduated from the University of Minnesota where he studied Political Science, Business and Industrial Relations. A writer for Examiner.com, he also consults with a variety of organizations and individuals helping them develop and grow. His work can be found at Examiner.com.